Executive Attention at Eight Years: Concurrent and Longitudinal Predictors and Individual Differences.

Executive attention, the attention necessary to reconcile conflict among simultaneous attentional demands, is vital to children's daily lives. This attention develops rapidly as the anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal areas mature during early and middle childhood. However, the developmental course of executive attention is not uniform amongst children.

Exercise facilitates smoking cessation indirectly via improvements in smoking-specific self-efficacy: Prospective cohort study among a national sample of young smokers.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine whether exercise is associated with 2-year follow-up smoking status through its influence on smoking-specific self-efficacy.

Methods: Longitudinal data from the 2003-2005 National Youth Smoking Cessation Survey were used, including 1,228 participants (16-24 years). A questionnaire was used to examine baseline exercise levels, baseline smoking-specific self-efficacy, follow-up smoking status, and the covariates.

Brain Electrical Activity of Shy and Non-Shy Preschool-Aged Children during Executive Function Tasks.

Psychophysiological and cognitive performance differences exist between shy and non-shy individuals. Neuroimaging studies have shown identifiable differences in task-related cortical functioning between adults with and without sensitivity to social events. The current study compared baseline and task measures of EEG power (6-9 Hz) for 125 shy and non-shy children between the ages of 41-55 months who differed in core executive function (EF) skills.

A Longitudinal Perspective on the Association between Cognition and Temperamental Shyness.

Moderate, yet relatively consistent, associations between cognitive performance and shyness have been reported throughout the child and adult literatures. The current study assessed longitudinal associations between cognition (i.e.

A longitudinal study of emotion regulation and anxiety in middle childhood: Associations with frontal EEG asymmetry in early childhood.

We investigated whether brain electrical activity during early childhood was associated with anxiety symptoms and emotion regulation during a stressful situation during middle childhood. Frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetries were measured during baseline and during a cognitive control task at 4 1/2 years. Anxiety and emotion regulation were assessed during a stressful situation at age 9 (speech task), along with measures of heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV).

The integration of cognition and emotion during infancy and early childhood: regulatory processes associated with the development of working memory.

This study was an attempt to integrate cognitive development (i.e., cognitive control) and emotional development (i.

Changes in brain functioning from infancy to early childhood: evidence from EEG power and coherence working memory tasks.

Using measures of EEG power and coherence with a longitudinal sample, the goal of this study was to examine developmental changes in brain electrical activity during higher order cognitive processing at infancy and early childhood. Infants were recruited at 8 months of age and performed an infant working-memory task based on a looking version of the A-not-B task. At age 4.

Emotion and cognition: an intricately bound developmental process.

Regulatory aspects of development can best be understood by research that conceptualizes relations between cognition and emotion. The neural mechanisms associated with regulatory processes may be the same as those associated with higher order cognitive processes. Thus, from a developmental cognitive neuroscience perspective, emotion and cognition are dynamically linked and work together to process information and execute action.

Working memory and inhibitory control in early childhood: Contributions from physiology, temperament, and language.

This study examined the cognitive skills of working memory and inhibitory control (WMIC) in relation to physiological functioning, temperament, and language in early childhood. WMIC skills were assessed in twenty-five 4 1/2-year-old children using the day--night Stroop-like task and the yes--no task; each task required the child to remember two rules and to inhibit a dominant response. Electroencephalogram (EEG) and heart period (HP) were recorded during baseline and WMIC tasks.